What do you think about this practise? Granted, some devs have a meager budget and aren't necessarily artists by nature, but the practice basically degenerated to a point where it has been abused and app stores are flooded to the brim with numerous clones of popular titles or emulators with off the shelf assets or code used verbatim or with minimal changes. It is so much that it makes game to game conversions of cars or character models by fans seem legitimate in comparison.

What worries me is that the said practise could eventually lead to decreased user trust in app stores, similar to how people lost faith in Atari during the 1983 video game crashed which was partly caused by software of dubious quality and market oversaturation.

huckleberrypie wrote:What do you think about this practise? Granted, some devs have a meager budget and aren't necessarily artists by nature, but the practice basically degenerated to a point where it has been abused and app stores are flooded to the brim with numerous clones of popular titles or emulators with off the shelf assets or code used verbatim or with minimal changes. It is so much that it makes game to game conversions of cars or character models by fans seem legitimate in comparison.

What worries me is that the said practise could eventually lead to decreased user trust in app stores, similar to how people lost faith in Atari during the 1983 video game crashed which was partly caused by software of dubious quality and market oversaturation.

I have noticed this before. Well, not the oversaturation, but the fact that there ARE shitty apps on pretty much everything. It doesn't matter what it is, whether it's emulator clones, Pokemon Go companion apps (Pokedexes, trackers, guides, etc.) or "Elsa Frozen Brain Surgery" (That game exists, I kid you not), there's at least fifty of them.

It's a problem, but I doubt it's a problem anyone cares about enough to take care of.

huckleberrypie wrote:What do you think about this practise? Granted, some devs have a meager budget and aren't necessarily artists by nature, but the practice basically degenerated to a point where it has been abused and app stores are flooded to the brim with numerous clones of popular titles or emulators with off the shelf assets or code used verbatim or with minimal changes. It is so much that it makes game to game conversions of cars or character models by fans seem legitimate in comparison.

What worries me is that the said practise could eventually lead to decreased user trust in app stores, similar to how people lost faith in Atari during the 1983 video game crashed which was partly caused by software of dubious quality and market oversaturation.

I have noticed this before. Well, not the oversaturation, but the fact that there ARE shitty apps on pretty much everything. It doesn't matter what it is, whether it's emulator clones, Pokemon Go companion apps (Pokedexes, trackers, guides, etc.) or "Elsa Frozen Brain Surgery" (That game exists, I kid you not), there's at least fifty of them.

It's a problem, but I doubt it's a problem anyone cares about enough to take care of.

Just as when you thought that Apple is strict when it comes to approving apps on their market. And how come Nintendo hasn't used their litigious attitude towards Poke-ripoffs when they have done a rather draconian crackdown on fan games? Same goes for Disney as mentioned in the Nintendo rant thread. Double standards much?

huckleberrypie wrote:Just as when you thought that Apple is strict when it comes to approving apps on their market. And how come Nintendo hasn't used their litigious attitude towards Poke-ripoffs when they have done a rather draconian crackdown on fan games? Same goes for Disney as mentioned in the Nintendo rant thread. Double standards much?

Apple's standards are more along the line of "It can't be innapropriate, spam filled, or an emulator. Other than that, we don't give a shit."And Google, on the other hand, is just plain old "We don't give a shit."

Apple's standards are more along the line of "It can't be innapropriate, spam filled, or an emulator. Other than that, we don't give a shit."And Google, on the other hand, is just plain old "We don't give a shit."

Makes me wonder if this would result in a repeat of what happened to Atari when shovelware flooded their game library, prompting Nintendo to introduce their (draconian) licencing scheme ostensibly to maintain quality.

I think there are some misconceptions about the Google Play Store/Apple App Store.

To make this even simplier I am going to narrow down the scope to just games (not counting the hundreds of camera filter apps that are copies of other and stuff like this) and also leaving out actual malware (yes games with really really really anoying ads are bot malware and both stores at least attempt to verify that a game will not hirt your device at a minium)

1. There wil be a loss of trust in the app store. -- The issue here is that anyone who knows wht these companies are doing already didn't trust the app store (small part of the population) and the ones who do not know that these are asset flips and other shady practices are juat looking for something to kill time and just don't care. People who understand what is going on generally don't buy games on app stores based on it being tied to X (movie, book or other game franchise) unless we look at who made it and think they are a reputable developer. Parents who just want their Disney Cars crazed little bundle of terror to be quiet for 5 mins doesn't really care who made it just if it can keep their kid happy for a little bit in the car. Heck this was/is standard practice in "AAA" tie in games to this day (some exceptions apply).

2. This will hurt the market -- The market for phones is fpr a general communication device that most people need to have to function in modern society. Whether or not this is correct is not really relevant. They are not primary game machines, the lukewarm reception of game focused phones Xperia Play and the N Gage are pretty good examples of this. People who want to kill time while out and about will continue to pick up little time killers on their phones and people who want serious mobile games on the go will either, use emulators/ find the few really outstanding games on mobile (mostly ports)/ or carry around a portable game system. What this may do is make sure better games never really come to mobile..... but we may already be far far past that point.